fashionRIP is a multidiscipline, transmedia installation of chapters, an exploration of perceptions and beliefs. It’s a platform that explores ecosystems health, generative economics, social justice, cultural and creative diversity. Starting with recycouture garments, the story became the Project. It is now an evolving experiment, designed to explore meaningful relationship based constructs that put human potential and whole systems health over the abstract ideas of faux "the real world."

Sunday, August 19, 2012

This is so cool. I have been working on myth deconstruction as a way to (now) lovingly dismantle the fallacies we were led to believe in order to recognize how they have colored our walk through the ages. I am doing this from the western cultural perspective but am not limited to that tunnel. People have been mingling for a long time, so even if i tried to edit, i would be in a fantasy. (clue number 3)

It's the historical edits that have created our delusional consent and getting past the fast food of mental distractions is kind of like snooping in some huge forbidden yet available, attic. Some trunks are locked, some are open and untouched others are pawed through with their contents spilling over the sides This is a wondrous shadowy place of vast mental treasures, full of ideas, stories, facts and fables. This is where brain sparklers lie dormant.

Brain sparklers are abundantly available, grow with sharing, get farther off road the longer you travel and light the way for ever more exploring. Their energy multiplies with use, makes people happy which empowers us to pass the happiness on (See the Happiness Advantage on PBS). The more happiness that is spread around the better, therefore it seems most wise to enable happiness. This ultimately arrives at the gift that everyone is born to deliver, for in that "birthing" the seeds of true happiness spread. This is not a mandate or a measure (Bhutan's gross national happiness) this is about expanding life's potential.

So I have been exploring through Lilliths, Eves, Adams, Mephistopheles, Lucifers, Jesus(es), gods, godesses, Ice Queens, Mary Magdalenes, Delilahs, Davids, Goliaths, saints and sinners. Bouncing this off rules and regulations, policies and those ubiquitous "everybody knows" is a roller coaster ride. Landing for a spell on this piece by Charles Eisenstein was magick and fundamentally sublime aka meant to be. I am so grateful for the male viewpoint that shares the concept of coming back together in a way that aligns with whole thinking, that i am quite giddy. Please read this great blog entry, Money and the Divine Masculine and share the joy.

So the story i needed to help myself understand is growing and as it grows i see the ways to forgive a life that has confused, angered, frustrated, delighted, fooled, tricked, mesmerized and harmed me and others. My gift is to share the keys to the attic, to open trunks with crusty old locks and to tell the story of us in new ways.

Once one sees the glam, glitz and tawdry bits of what can only be called a manmade superimposition laid out like caked makeup on a bigger more beautiful reality, then we can consciously choose a future that is not just desirable but extremely do-able. Awww the freedom of bliss!

I am working on a script that pulls myths from their jackets, gives them a shake and spills their pocket contents. I believe this can help heal collective worldviews; really!. Once we understand how the old stories hinder possibilities, we will replace them with new, mature, evolved stories that point us in another, dare i say enlightened, (yes, of course) direction.

I think the male/female divide has a lot of strings attached to it and may be the origin (stem cell) of the pathology our species is experiencing. This powerfully emotional relationship paradox was constructed way before the written word and makes this to be both a research and intuitive process, I realize i have been working on this most of my life. As a child tests boundaries, i just continued, questioning the validity of the "truth." i apologize to everyone i hurt, confused and angered on the way. I guess this is my give back, the gift i was meant to deliver.

So this is personal and more. If we can heal at passions front, then perhaps the damage we did under the influence can be faced and dealt with on the broad plains of our existence. We will stop the destruction once we understand why we smash things. We will be healers, menders and lovers instead. We will be "Heroes."

So in poking around the world of borders, rungs, divisions, territories and restraints i remembered a striking divisive example that was propagated through the mores and media of the 1800s.

This has to do with the Victorian policy that alluded to the separation of work and the domestic front. Separation allowed men to leave their consciences at home and enter the workplace as if readying for war. This furthered the "brotherhood of men" and seems to have left a legacy of loyalty i still encounter with chagrin. It is a path in its own right of wrong, but for now i will stick to the ladies and gents. (that brotherhood, patriots thing is a twisting root that will be dealt with later)

The Robber Baron era of tenements and poverty is a big part of this picture. Labor was culled cheaply from immigrants and the poor, to build the wealth of the few who had the means (money, connections and resources) to actually extract the resources, start the factories, distribute the goods and create the big services (banks and insurance companies, etc). This was "reality" and was a hybrid of the monarchy hierarchical design.

The labor class had to be divided from the educated or mid class who in turn were separated from the owners. This way everybody knew who was who and what they were or soon to be, doing. This kept everything tidy.This clarity helped to maintain order. Order made "men" feel in control and all was/is well.

To help maintain order it was best to be able to judge "books by the covers" and voila, the business suit was born. The terms, white collar and blue collar became part of the language-attributed to Upton Sinclair-and are still in use. This aided clarity of course and marketing opportunites. Fashion was expanded to embrace the "middle class" and helped inform "progress." Fashion grew and another old skool wet dream flourished.

The white collar workers created good buffer zone characters that protected the owners and the onerous wealth making practices they dictated. Buff zoners had more to gain by following the owners dictates than their own nagging conscience. Caring for one's family justified the decision and all was "well."

David Rockefeller is heard saying that family is all that matters, in the documentary Money as Debt. It also was a fave of the mobsters, well at least the ones that lived on screens, this is interesting, no?

Therefore the family was the heart and soul of the home but was best left in the dark when it came to "winning the bread." How can this work?

It can't, which is probably why the money makers card is skipped over in most history books. It is a tricky substance best left out of the "equality and justice for all" story.

The actual card gets played as the Joker, aka, as in the Horatio Alger stories about individuals who overcome the odds, misfortunes, poverty and pain to climb the ladder of success and rise to the "top." This makes for good stories and fullfills the "making it in America" propaganda that is necessary to keep the many toiling away for the benefit of the few. It provides the merit version that sustains beliefs.

So now, back to the 19th century and the pall of coal sooted skies, where upper class men were engaged in businesses considered too harsh, tricky, tedious and/or unsettling for the sensibilities of the weaker sex.

To be fair, women were fainting due to tight corsets, slathering on arsenic laden creams and perhaps even swallowing a few tape worm pills, so the notion of fragility was somewhat true. Leaving ones business self at the office became a noble and decent gesture; it was meant to aid and heighten domestic bliss and keep the home fires burning.

This separation helped pave the way for even more gender role delusions and more cultural schizophrenia. It is a totally understandable, even well intended misstep. It is another link in the pathology of the western mindset.

If you've stayed with this unravel, the strand that made women the spiritual, social and domestic rulers of home and hearth, is now visible. It is the juxtapose that provided the fodder that grew into the "woman behind the man" tales of modern lore. It was a convenient concept, a separate but equal think, for gender role assignation and was later conveniently adapted to gentrify racism. We humans love a good repeat. (machine thinkers pablum)

Now i must bring in a book i read years ago, about an original domestic goddess, Mrs. Astor, who ruled NYC, by calling the social shots. She could make or break a person's standing and that aided or constrained a families abilities to thrive. If you weren't invited to an Astor social it meant you were doomed to job loss, social ostracization and other calamities. Wealth was power and had naught to do with anything as laudable as merit. It was a catty, stylish pecking order ruled by a most famously coiffed peckerhead. (Nod to Michael Refuzer for this pun) .

PS -Oh right, this was of course the "upper class," Poverty was much more inclusive. The flower seller, classic ugly duckling to swan tale of My Fair Lady (from Pygmalian) and the gang of thieves in Dicken's London, Oliver Twist care less about the niceties of gender roles and focus on surviving the best one can. Note: The authors also took care to single out one from the many and glorify their rise in the social order. That made for a good "publishable" yarn.

Why it Matters

What's the matter with more and more fashion choices?

It sounds good; we love to be able to pick the perfect outfit. You wear it once or twice and then ....what was the real cost here?

Your time to shop and the money spent, not so much ....go a little deeper and consider the fiber source, the dyes and chemicals used, the health toll on the workers, the energy to run the machines, the transporting carbons...and now it just takes up closet space. But so what? It's been going on for-almost-ever and you didn't make the rules.

In fact we are told this is what a "healthy" economy looks like.

You will recycle it after all, give it to charity or your sister. This is more transportation and more release of those greenhouse gases. We are using a lot of our personal energy and the resources of this planet to make, use and dump "trash" Some rags, remnants and tawdry bits will molder for eons in landfills, as nature's microbial actions are hampered by our normalized, everyday toxic lifestyles.

This goes beyond dumps as the breakdown cycle that nourishes the life of this planet has been sorely challenged by GMO crops, fertilizers, pesticides, antimicrobials..RIGHT!!. All the "living better through chemistry" propaganda after WWI and II- AKA how to sell your "garbage," is our legacy. Well no more, not on my (our) watch, we are seeing things quite differently.

As we now carry 298 toxins in our bods that weren't there in the 1930s the toxic residues of normal are haunting us more and more. Ironic, no? Advanced is merely a word.

Go to the So Whats the Point blog in February for the numbers.

It All connects - it's all One

Extinctions ...So What?

Life evolves, some species survive some don't. We like to allude to Darwin's "natural selection" or Herbert Spencer's "survival of the fittest" because we are so good at reproducing and taking over this planet and justifying that side of our natures. The fact that we are wiping out the food chain by destroying habitat, fouling air and water and generally behaving like arrogant, tinkering idiots, is called business as usual. .....Well I and others are no longer buying that "sell."

We are wising up to the idea that we too, are dependent on these resources. We too, are physically an organic species and we really don't know what little extinction will be the start of the chain reaction that collapses the structure that we too, are dependent on.

Is this the price we are willing to pay for a pair of plastic shoes?

I say no, that despite the focus on the physical, we are more. We are heart and soul, mind, body, spirit. We are born of stars and we can and will leap over this world view based in old, untrue beliefs led by a science of isolation and religions of patriarchal, hierarchical constructs (your basic dominating Dad- with self reflective rights to rule). It is time to come together and heal. To transition into our fuller expectations and open the new possibilities. We are born with genius...let us help each other get to where we all can shine.

About Me

Former owner of Zootsuit Custom Apparel, am now, creative director of fashionRIP an eco-politico multi-media, collaborative arts series - part of FashonRip Project –an experiment in interrelationships and alignments. Acting to design life to meet needs and desires in ways that won’t jeopardize true needs, makes sense. I have a BA from The Evergreen State College - Environmental Science & Communications as foci. This tops off 4 AAs (Marketing, Apparel, Web Design, Transfer) certificates in modeling & Communications in Business & Media. Borders between disciplines are subjective, permeable. Broad spectrum approaches open up concepts of individual potential, expanded possibilities and a living uni-verse. Co creative partnering beats war against otherness. Stepping into harmony with our whole, authentic, possible selves is healthy growth. This is the story I am sharing. Grounded, i am happy to present, lecture, teach, create events, design, display, install and re-imagine all manner of arts. I also eco consult, alter, repair and redesign fabulous unique garb, images et al. E mail-debbarnesusa@hotmail.com subject fashionRIP,-for current information